"I do not," said Elsie; "if I did,--if I thought you were now, like him before you, plotting, even in conceit, a wrong to that noble girl,--if I thought this," she added, with singular asperity, "I would put hemlock into your food, though you were the child of my own sister, and you should die before morning!" "I commend your zeal in the lady's cause, and will myself endeavour to imitate it. But there, an end, Elsie; we will talk of this no more. Your fears are even more groundless than injurious. I will leave the valley soon--perhaps very soon; and I will murder no one, while I remain in it." So saying, to end a discussion which was becoming disagreeable, he left the house, resolved to make his way to the scene of his late disaster. In this resolution he continued, until he reached the park-gate; when, suddenly observing the flutter of a white garment under the trees near to the mansion, he turned from his path, and again found himself in the presence of the Captain's daughter. And thus it happened with him on the next day, the next, and again the next; until the little thread that tangled his spirit had become a web from which there was no escape, unless by rending away some of the vital limbs it encircled. He sang and painted as before; nay, he assailed the Battle of Brandywine with zeal and industry, and had advanced so far with the work, before the occurrence of unlooked-for events chilled his enthusiasm and palsied his hand, that he was able to carry it to the mansion, and exhibit it to the father and daughter, that he might derive all the advantage of their remarks on the most difficult feature of his subject,--that is to say, the figure of the Captain's deceased son. In the meanwhile, he confirmed the good impression he had long since made on his two friends, and was indeed admitted to such intimacy with both, as marked, not only their sense of his merits, but their own simplicity of character. In the case of the Captain, he certainly began to fill up the gap made in his affections by the death of his son; and as for Catherine, she soon appreciated the value of a friendship based upon grateful recollections, and, what seemed to her, a delicate and purely disinterested regard for her weal and happiness. The situation of this unhappy girl,--for such, in truth, she was,--was of a nature to engage her feelings warmly in favour of any one approaching her with real friendship, as it was also to touch the sympathies of the discerning and compassionate. "Naught is there under heaven's wide hollownesse, That moves more dear compassion of mind, Than beautie brought t' unworthie wretchednesse, Through envie's snares, or fortune's freaks unkind."